Faculty
Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments,
and honors of the University of Houston Law Center faculty. This publication
is a service of the Faculty Services Department, O'Quinn Law Library, University
of Houston Law Center.

April 2000

Richard Alderman
announced that the Consumer Law Project has received $24,000 from the
Texas Bar Foundation and $10,000 from Consumer Credit Counseling Service to
prepare an educational video for high school students. The video project is
designed to teach graduating high school seniors some basic everyday law and
also provide some financial information to help them better deal with the realities
of budgeting and credit. It is a joint effort of the Consumer Law Project, the
State Bar Law Focused Education and Consumer Credit Counseling Service. It is
believed that this is the first time any such project had been undertaken by
a law school. The tape, with lesson plans, should be available to schools in
Fall 2000. He also received a “Richard Alderman Day” award from the Houston
City Council for his efforts to educate the public about the law.

Christine Hurt
will be speaking at “Moving On: Preparing Students for Life After the First
Year” a conference sponsored by The Legal Writing Institute July 19-22,
2000, in Seattle Washington, at The Seattle University School of Law. The title
of the presentation is “Teaching to the E-Generation: The Interactive
Citation Workstation.”

M.H. “Butch”
Cersonsky’sarticle: Deposit Agreements Between Banks and their Customers-A
Wall of protection or a wall with a false Foundation?, 31 Tex. Tech. Rev.
1 (2000), won the “outstanding lead article award” for volume 31 of the Texas
Tech. Law Review.

Tony Chase
was the keynote speaker at the 20th Annual Denton County NAACP Annual Banquet
on March 23, 2000. On March 27, he will speak about seller financing for minority
broadcasters at the Rainbow Push National Conference on Broadcasting and Telecommunications
in Washington, D.C. He was also elected to the board of directors of Leap
Wireless International (NASDAQ), an international wireless service provider.
March 18, it was announced in the Houston Business Journal and the Wall Street
Journal that he purchased eleven radio stations from Clear Channel Communications,
Inc. (NYSE).

Sandy Gaines
has been making the most of being in Europe for the semester as a senior
Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. In addition to
teaching a class on trade and environment to 25 students, he conducted a two-day
seminar on trade and environment for eight Danish Ph.D. students. On March
27, he gave a 3-hour class on trade and environment as a guest lecturer at
the University of Copenhagen. He was invited by the Environmental Law Working
Group of the European University Institute in Florence to speak to researchers
there on April 4 about the recent decision in the WTO on shrimp trade and sea
turtle protection. On April 24-26, he has been invited to participate in and
speak at a “retreat” of environmental law professors and graduate students at
the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. A week later, May 3-6, he will be hosted
by the University of Oslo law faculty. In Oslo he will lead a one-day seminar
on trade and environment for Norwegian government officials and scholars,
and talk to faculty and students on U.S. environmental law. Meanwhile, back
in the western hemisphere, he has been invited to join the editorial board
of the "Boletin Mexicano de Derecho Comparado", published by the Instituto
de Investigacionec Juridicas of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
(one of the most important law reviews of its kind in Mexico and Latin America.)

Sandra Guerra
completed work on an entry entitled “Informal Dispositions” for the Encyclopedia
of Crime and Justice (MacMillan Publishers) edited by Joshua Dressler. She
also gave a guest lecture on the rules of evidence in a criminal case
at the High School for Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement on April 5th.

Ellen Marrus
testified before the Texas State Senate Jurisprudence Committee on child
support and visitation enforcement. Additionally, she has been appointed
to the National Juvenile Justice Committee and will serve as the coordinator
for the Southwest Regional Juvenile Justice Center.

Douglas Moll
has received the University of Houston’s prestigious Enron Teaching Excellence
Award for the 1999-2000 academic year.

Tom Oldham
and M. Melli’s book Child Support: The Next Frontier will be published
by the University of Michigan Press during April.

Michael A. Olivas
spoke before the Jewish Community Center of San Antonio on “Hate Speech on the
Internet,” and at Trinity University on “Immigration Reform” in late March.
He spoke on “Why to Become a Law Professor/ and Why not” at the South Texas
College of Law/ People of Color Regional Conference. The Journal of Legal Education
published his “Paying for a Law degree: Trends in Student Borrowing and the
Ability to Repay Debt,” at 49 J. Leg. Educ. 333 (1999), issued in March, 2000,
while the College Board published his co-authored study, Prepaying & Saving
for College: Opportunities and Issues. He delivered a paper with the title “Border
Mythologies” at the Harvard University/ David Rockefeller Institute for Latin
American Studies conference held in Cambridge that will be published in a volume
by the Harvard University Press in 2001. He also published a book review of
Sometimes There is No Other Side in 71 J. of Higher Education 258 (March/April,
2000).

Jordan Paust’s
writings were cited in United States v. Laden, S.N.D.Y. (March 2000) and
The Prosecutor v. Akayesu, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTR-96-4-T
(2 September, 1998). His The Documents Supplement for International Law and
Litigation in the U.S. (West Publishing, American Casebook Series 2000)
has been printed.

Yale Rosenberg
received the University of Houston Enron Teaching Excellence Award for
Full Professor.

Ronald Turner’s
article, “HIV/AIDS, the Workplace, and Federal Appeals Courts’ Construction
of the ADA” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the AIDS & Public
Policy Journal. He has been selected to serve as the chair for the 2000 Southeast/Southwest
Scholars of Color Conference that will be held at the University Of Arkansas,
Fayetteville.